Modi’s government may be small; the state continues to be big

Narendra Modi’s 45-ministry government has attracted a lot of attention. It is also being hailed as the first step in what could be his signature style of governance – minimum government, maximum governance.
Sorry, but it isn’t.
Modi’s government is certainly a lean government, but it isn’t a minimum government. Let’s not confuse the two concepts. A lean government is about size and numbers. A minimal government is about a philosophy, a certain view of the role of the state.
A minimal state, as defined in the classical liberalism lexicon, is about the state confining itself to just a few areas. There is consensus on two – defence of external boundaries and enforcing law and order as well as upholding the rule of law. There are departures from this point on details. Some liberal streams include the provision of public goods as a responsibility of the state and there are differences on the definition of public goods as well. But the broad point is this: the state should not get into too many areas and most definitely not in areas where people are able to manage their own affairs through their own individual enterprise.  
India is not familiar with the idea of a minimal government. Before 1947, it was used to a colonial-feudal set up and post 1947 that got converted into a mai-baap sarkar. The state kept assuming more and more responsibilities till it was present in practically every aspect of the lives of individual and enterprises, riding roughshod over personal and economic freedoms. And yet the size of the government remained relatively small. Indira Gandhi, remember, ran lean governments. The unwieldy size of ministries is a post-seventies phenomenon. Remember also that gargantuan cabinets continued even after 1991 even as the command-and-control economy structure got steadily dismantled. 
It was only the Swatantra Party that came close to articulating the idea of a minimal state. The second of the 21 principles of the party stated: `. . . The party stands for the principle of maximum freedom for the individual and minimum interference by the state consistent with the obligation to prevent and punish anti-social activities, to protect the weaker elements of society and to create the conditions in which individual initiative will thrive and be fruitful. . .’ It is unfortunate that the party did not get much traction.
Modi’s government doesn’t quite pass this test.
It will if his government decides that the state should not be running hotels, airlines and providing telecom services and gets rid of the public sector in these areas. Instead, Modi talks about strengthening public sector undertakings. It is not clear if the government will pursue an aggressive disinvestment agenda.
It will pass with flying colours if the information and broadcasting ministry, steel ministry, culture ministry and the Planning Commission were disbanded. These are clearly, clearly relics of the socialist era. There are a host of other ministries that could make it to the axing list, but changing their role instead into a more of facilitating/regulatory role can be a subject of debate. Closing down these four is a complete no-brainer; no debate is needed.
There are some who argue that since the increase in the role of the state led to the unwieldy size of the government, limiting the size of the government will automatically result in a reduced role for the state, since administration will be a challenge otherwise. This argument is flawed. One, as already noted, Indira Gandhi ran a tight ship but one which was omnipresent and omniscient. Two, reducing the number of ministries and departments will not lead to shedding of work. On the other hand, technology can make it easier for the state to have its tentacles everywhere – far, far more easier than in the seventies.
Though Modi’s minimum government maximum governance idea does talk about the government moving from an interventionist to a facilitating role, the focus is more about using technology to speed up processes, clearances and permissions and make them transparent. It does not question the need for the myriad procedures that any interface with the government involves. It does not question the number of points of interface with the government. It is about making the government efficient in its current role, not about questioning its role.
Maybe that will come. Maybe Modi will realise that the problem with governance in India is that the state/government has taken on far more responsibilities beyond what should be its core responsibility of defence, law and order, upholding the rule of law and provision of public goods. Maybe he will realise the need for the state to focus on just these and do its job well.
Modi must be persuaded into making the 45-ministry government the first step of an ideological leap of faith. A small government must also mean a small, but effective, state.

A call to arms: Time to get the classical liberal agenda going

What does the stupendous victory of the Narendra Modi-led BJP in the recent elections mean for India’s liberals - the genuine liberals, not the left-of-centre variety?
But first, let’s get definitions out of the way. The word `liberal’ has been appropriated by far too many pretenders and it’s time for the real liberals to reclaim the tag. The genuine liberals are those who believe in the supremacy of the individual, a small but strong state and no overbearing state intervention in the economy. Not for this section a paternalistic state, one that encourages a dependency syndrome in the garb of empowering people. Not for this section any compromise with personal, intellectual, cultural and economic freedoms. And with the rule of law.
This section was starved of a political voice after the Swatantra Party disappeared from the scene in the mid-1970s, though it has been making itself heard, especially after 1991, through other forums. It cheered the initiation of the economic liberalisation process but despaired at the continued overhang of the socialist era, in the form of the paternalistic-cum-nanny state. Contrary to the lampooning of it by the leftist brigade as `neo-liberals’ pushing the agenda of big business, this section has been warning against the economic reforms process being more pro-business than pro-market and pressing for a correction of this skew.
This group (barring a section that is firmly with the Congress) has, undoubtedly, aligned itself with Modi, decisively rejecting the fear-mongering by the leftists and the Congress. His articulation of the minimum-government-maximum-governance idea, spot-on linking of corruption with lack of transparency in governance and promise to address that, disinclination for sop-driven welfare-ism, clear focus on infrastructure and an enabling business environment has resonated with them. Other post-1991 governments had opened up the economy, but no Prime Minister (not even Atal Behari Vajpayee) had articulated a cogent view of the role of the state the way Modi has.
The liberals have quibbles with Modi’s silence on privatisation and his opposition to foreign multi-brand retailers, but see these as minor details that don’t detract from the fact of a directional shift in economic policy and the role of the state.
This, the liberals seemed to have realised, is the closest they could get to the old Swatantra model. For them the decisive mandate that Modi has got is an affirmation of their belief fact that people – even if they don’t understand ideological labels – are instinctively against dole-centric policies (it isn’t as clear as that but let’s leave that for now).
This group will obviously want Modi to deliver on completely dismantling the socialist edifice that had been built up in the pre-1991 era. They know it can’t be done overnight – the stroke-of-pen reforms got over in the early 1990s. It will be a long-drawn out process, with roadblocks aplenty and even some rollbacks. But they will give him time so long as his focus is clear and he reins in the swadeshi economics brigade in the BJP and the sangh parivar which gave the Vajpayee government a hard time. Some leading lights of this group could get closely involved with a Modi government. 
But there are concerns.
One, what if Modi’s promise of a new economic paradigm isn’t what it seems? What if, as Vivek Dehejia asks in this article, `Modi’s instincts are certainly pro-business, but are they pro-free market’? Wouldn’t this run the same risk of encouraging the kind of cronyism that became rampant in the past decade? Two, will he decisively junk the dole-centric welfare model, which the BJP is not entirely averse to (after all it merrily went around supporting the rights-based entitlement legislations)?
Three, and this is a larger concern, what about the role of the RSS in the personal, cultural and intellectual space? The fact that Modi will not allow the RSS to dictate the economic agenda is clear; that he will do so in other areas as well is not. He hasn’t revealed his mind on the issue of non-economic freedoms, the upholding of which is just as important to the liberals as the ensuring of economic freedoms. He has, till now, remained silent on this. There has been no reaction to the Supreme Court order on Section 377. He has also never come out and expressly condemned attacks on intellectual and cultural freedoms as well as provocative statements against Muslims by the rabid right-wingers.
Also, though they don’t buy the mass-murderer imagery that the so-called `secularists’ propagate, they are critical of Modi’s failure to check the 2002 riots. Upholding the rule of law and protecting life and property is an essential part of the classical liberal agenda.
So there is a dilemma.
Should the liberals remain silent on the social issues, and concentrate their energies on getting the economic agenda going, ensuring particularly that this agenda is a pro-market one and not a pro-big business or worse pro-business house one? After all, the entire left-of-centre brigade will be extra-vigilant on the non-economic freedoms, looking for the first chance to trip Modi up. Should the liberals focus on redefining the role of the state in a way that it doesn’t get into the personal and intellectual space and on strengthening institutions so that they can never become compromised regardless of the regime in power? But what if the doomsday predictions of the `secularists’ come true and gangs of sanghis go around attacking minorities,  young couple indulging in PDA and getting books and art shows banned? Should they remain silent spectators because the economic issues are getting addressed?
Would criticising Modi strengthen both the fringe elements in the sangh parivar, who want to push their exclusivist and conservative social agenda, as well as the leftists/Congress supporters, who are just waiting for any opportunity to discredit and pull down India’s first avowedly right-of-centre government?
These are questions the liberals have to wrestle with in the coming days.
The problem they will face is that if they criticise the government, they will be at the receiving end of the ire of the online and offline Modi fanatics as well as the we-told-you-so jeers of leftists and Congress supporters. If they remain silent, the latter will label them fascist sympathisers waiting for suitable rewards. 
But is this twin attack new to them? Haven’t the liberals always been criticised and labelled by extremists on both sides, as well as Congress sympathisers masquerading as neutral intellectuals? Should the fear of such name-calling come in the way of making the most of the first opportunity they have got to expand the genuinely liberal space in India?
Certainly not.
The Swatantra had limited success because the intellectual climate in the sixties and seventies was overwhelmingly leftist. That is no longer the case.
So why can’t the liberals work with the Modi government, flooding it with new ideas and creating an environment for greater receptivity to economic reforms, something that has been sorely missing till now? At the same time, any attempts to subvert institutions, impose an artificial intellectual consensus or a conservative social agenda and snuff out dissenting voices (including left-of-centre voices) should also be opposed. The two approaches need not be contradictory.
History will not forgive India’s real liberals if they pass up this opportunity.

The Scalping of Daljeet Kohli: A Silly and Wasted Effort

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/the-scalping-of-daljeet-kohli-a-silly-and-wasted-effort-1498385.html

In December 1997, this writer had gone to interview Pranab Mukherjee, then an ordinary MP of the Congress Party. The news of a Congressman, Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, joining the Bharatiya Janata Party had broken just an hour earlier. When I mentioned this to Mukherjee, he burst out with an incredulous look on his face: `Mohan-da’s son joining the BJP? How is that possible?’ 
For those who don’t know, Rangarajan (popularly known as Ranga) was the son of Mohan Kumaramangalam, a leading light of the Communist Party of India who joined the Congress in 1967 and became an integral part of Indira Gandhi’s leftist band. He had died in 1973 and so was spared headlines similar to those playing out a day after Manmohan Singh’s half-brother joined the BJP.
Mukherjee’s reaction to Ranga jumping parties and the current buzz over Singh’s brother shows one thing will never change in this country – the typical Indian refusal to see an individual and his or her choices outside of the family context.
Mukherjee’s reaction was not to a Congressman switching sides, but to a left-wing Mohan-da’s son joining a right-wing party. Daljeet Singh Kohli was just another businessman, whose decision to join a party would have been a `non-event’, as finance minister P. Chidambaram quite rightly put it. The only reason the BJP made his entry into its ranks a huge spectacle was his relationship with Manmohan Singh.
Modi’s reported statement on the occasion – `Dr Manmohan Singh’s brother has joined the BJP and this will add to our strength’ – reflects poorly, not on Singh and the Congress, but on himself. Is the BJP in such a bad shape that it requires the entry of a little-known brother of a man whom its leaders have never ceased to mock as the weakest-ever Prime Minister to give it strength? Does a party which is supposedly riding to victory on a Modi wave have to resort to such gimmickry?
Even as a political strategy – to show that everyone from the party to the family is abandoning Singh – it doesn’t make sense. It would have, if Singh was standing for elections and was prime ministerial candidate. He is not; he will retire from active politics and perhaps go into oblivion after his Rajya Sabha term is over. So what is to be achieved by `embarrassing’ him? It will only give a Congress which has already abandoned him a chance to say in private – see, we were right to junk him.
By the way, the Congress too has not shied away from splitting families on political lines, the most famous example being of the Scindia family, where Madhavrao was wooed into the Congress fold, deeply hurting his mother, Vijayaraje Scindia. So let the party not take a moral high ground on the Kohli affair.
The way the media has reported this is also a comment on its intellectual bankruptcy. Why should Kohli joining the BJP be an `embarrassment’ for Singh? Why is one brother said to have `deserted’ another?  Why is this a `psychological boost’ for the BJP? Didn’t the person writing this – and the editors clearing the copy – stop for a moment and think of the inherent contradiction between stories of a BJP on a high and requiring Kohli, of all people, as a psychological boost? Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of this is Chidambaram being asked about it at a press conference where he was rubbishing Gujarat’s economic model. Shouldn’t the questions have focused on pinning him down on the UPA’s shaky economic performance, instead?
This is not the first time the media has tried to put Singh in a spot over the political leanings of his family members. The fact that his youngest daughter was working for a human rights organization in the Untied States criticizing the government’s counter-terrorism drive after 9/11 was, we were told, certain to embarrass him and affect his equation with the Bush administration. Didn’t it occur to anyone that this would be a non-issue in a culture which celebrates individualism and will not hold family members accountable for each other’s opinions and ideological leanings?
But why this obsession with family at all?
Why is Karuna Shukla quitting the BJP not about a senior party leader being sidelined but about Atal Behari Vajpayee’s niece on being ignored? If she were not Vajpayee’s niece would it have been alright for her to be ignored? Kohli too brings in the family angle. He says he joined the BJP because he was unhappy with the way the Congress treated his brother. So there is no ideological affinity with the party. (The irony of joining a party which has repeatedly mocked his brother in rather insulting terms is probably lost on him.)
Individuals can make choices that are different from that of their families. They are doing that all the time. They break away from the traditional occupations of their families and pursue their own paths. Children rebel against parents. Siblings take different paths. Families break up permanently with a lot of bitterness. And family members may even have irreconcilable ideological differences.
What’s more, this is quite common in Indian politics. Mohan Kumaramangalam’s father, P Subbarayan, who was a Congress leader, was supposed to have cried when his son became a communist. Subbarayan’s daughter, Parvati Krishnan, was also a member of the CPI. Ranga’s sister is in the BJP while his son has joined the Congress.
There are examples galore of families with members in different parties (apart from the Gandhi bahus, of course). Anil Shastri, son of Lal Bahadur Shastri, is in the Congress, while another son, Sunil, was with the BJP for several years before returning to the Congress, and a third son’s widow, Neera, is still with the BJP. One grandson, Siddharth Nath Singh, is in the BJP and another, Adarsh Shastri, has joined the Aam Aadmi Party. Noted lawyer, the late L.M Singhvi was in the BJP and his son Abhishek Manu Singhvi is a leading light of the Congress and was so even when his father was alive. Digvijaya Singh’s brother, Lakshaman Singh, quit the Congress for the BJP where he remained for 10 years before returning after a vituperative personal comment about his brother by Nitin Gadkari.
The ordinary public is quite aware of these differences in political families and their only reaction is one of amusement or cynical taunts about these families having ensured that they will benefit regardless of which party is in power.
How will they view the BJP holding up Kohli as a kind of trophy? There will be a few more jokes about Singh (mostly from die-hard BJP and Gandhi family supporters), some more about Kohli, but many more about the BJP. Is Kohli all that they could get, people are already sniggering. But mostly people will shrug it off. Singh is not even on their radar. That’s why the scalping of Kohli makes no sense at all.

Why Left’s intellectual bullying won’t work any more

http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/navyana-controversy-why-lefts-intellectual-bullying-wont-work-now-1487389.html

`We cannot so easily hand over a good writer to the Modi camp, not without a fight. . .’
Those are the words of S Anand, founder-publisher of Navayana, in an interview with Business Standard.  Navayana is the publishing house that withdrew an agreement to publish the translation of a novel by noted Tamil author Joe D’Cruz because he praised Narendra Modi.
So, the intellectual world’s worst-kept secret is out. Writers and artists belong to `camps’. They don’t inhabit the free, boundary-less world of ideas where, yes, there are rightist and leftist slants, but only to give an edge to debates. Those belonging to one ideologically-rigid camp will not tolerate one of their members being tolerant of, or agreeing with, the other. Anybody doing that will be found guilty of apostasy and be bullied back into the fold. So, contracts will be reneged on, books and articles will not be published, and opprobrium will be heaped on the renegade. And if that fails, they will be blackballed.
What else is Navayana’s action, and the words Anand has used in the interview, other than bullying? `We genuinely hope and believe Joe will eventually reconsider his views, which have drawn flak in Tamil literary and political spheres’. The implication is clear - the publication of the book (perhaps with another translator) will depend on D’Cruz revising his views on Modi, or at least publicly saying so.
Even when he is admitting that Navayana’s action may have been a bit haste, Anand cleverly shifts the blame on D’Cruz, accusing the latter of airing his support for Modi after signing the contract because he sensed the translator and Navayana would not have come on board otherwise. As writer Mukul Kesavan (who can by no stretch of imagination be called a Modi sympathiser), asks very aptly in this piece in The Telegraph, what if D’Cruz had aired his views after the book was published – `would Navayana have physically withdrawn the book and pulped it? Stacked the copies up and burnt them?’ He adds: `just to ask the question is to know the answer: of course not.’ Maybe he is right, but that scenario is not entirely beyond belief or possibility.
The D’Cruz affair has shattered another myth - the left-of-centre intellectual brigade’s sanctimonious pretence that it is the sole defender of intellectual freedom against the right-wing - specifically the Hindu right-wing – ravagers of this space.
The intellectual terrorism of the oxymoronic left-liberal brigade has actually been the elephant in the room for very long. Navayana’s immature action and rationalisation has only brought into the open what has always been done silently and in a very sophisticated manner. The rabid right-wing has very stupidly got books, plays and art exhibitions banned, physically attacked independent writers and artists and vandalised buildings and very rightly attracted public revulsion for itself and sympathy for the objects of its attack.
The left clique, in contrast, has for decades labelled people who hold positions diametrically opposite to it – American agents, World Bank-IMF stooges,  corporate apologists, pro-establishment, Hindutva types, and, lately, sanghis – and banished them to intellectual and academic Coventry, far  more effectively and without any taint of censorship being attached to it. 
Sometimes, it has not been silent. There have been occasions when an award or a official post being given to someone perceived to be a right-winger, or supported by a right-winger, or simply opposed by a left-winger or two on some selection committee has been openly and hysterically attacked. Let us not forget how, through the sixties and seventies and even part of the eighties, universities and academic institutions were systematically packed with left-leaning academics and right-leaning ones effectively sidelined.
If D’Cruz hadn’t gone public with what happened, his would have been yet another unnoticed case of successful gagging of non-left voices. Anand sounds peeved that the author `chose to speak to the media before he responded to my and Geetha’s [the translator of D’Cruz’s novel] emails or calls’. Is that a grouse that D’Cruz didn’t give them space for intellectual intimidation?
Can you imagine the outrage that would have ensued if a publisher with a right-of-centre ideological bent had dared do what Navayana did to an author who criticised Modi or wrote something that would have got khakhi knickers all a-twist? The muted criticism of Navayana is almost akin to deafening silence, in contrast.
Instead, there are too-clever-by-half attempts at sophistry, drawing distinctions between right wing and left wing intimidation.  What happened to Wendy Doniger’s book was censorship, we are told; this is only a publisher exercising his right to freedom to publish only certain kinds of authors. So, here is a publisher saying his decision to publish a book will be determined not by its contents but by the political views of its author. That’s not censorship? Anand is not a left-wing Dinanath Batra, the self-appointed guardian of Hindu history? Seriously?
For far too long had the right-of-centre band (the economic and social/cultural liberals as well as the conservatives) been edged out of the public discourse space by the left-of-centre cabal. But they are beginning to challenge this mafia and reclaim their place. They will not be intimidated any more by either whispered calumny or open taunts, by social or intellectual ostracism or by allegations that they have struck cosy deals with the New Establishment. Their resolve to fight back will not be weakened by broad hints that their freedom is short-lived and dependent on their not criticising the New Establishment. If and when they face attacks from this New Establishment, they will not go running into the arms of the self-appointed Sole Upholders of Liberal Values and beg to be forgiven for their transgressions and be taken back into a left-leaning world.
Joe D’Cruz has shown the way by standing up. The country needs more of his kind.

An Adarsh lesson for babus: Don’t flirt with political bosses

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-straight-from-fantasia-bjp-s-bank-transactions-tax-1947973

There has been a noticeable silence from the bureaucracy over the decision of the Maharashtra government to go soft on the politicians indicted by the J. A. Patil commission on the Adarsh Housing society scam, even as proceedings against the officials allegedly involved continue.
Contrast this with the outraged reactions when retired coal secretary P. C. Parakh was named in the first information report (FIR) in the coal block allocations case. Or when young IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal was suspended for taking on the sand mining mafia in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh. Serving and retired IAS officers demanded that safeguards be put in place to ensure that bureaucrats are not victimised for bona fide decisions and actions they take in the course of their work.
The contrast in responses is natural. Parakh and Nagpal were seen as honest officials being persecuted for legitimate decisions. The officers named in the Adarsh scam are seen as having benefited from illegal actions.
Important though this difference is, dare one suggest that the bureaucracy’s silence in the Adarsh case is a tad misplaced? The issue is not whether the officers are innocent or not; the issue is the patent double standards that the Maharashtra government has adopted.
The state government sees no duplicity. The politicians, chief minister Prithviraj Chavan quibbled, had merely extended political patronage and not indulged in any criminality. He is perhaps technically correct. After all it is the bureaucrats who initiate files, make notings and, in some cases, sign on decisions. Politicians merely indicate what they want done.
In Andhra Pradesh, eight IAS officers are facing criminal charges in cases of alleged corruption by former chief minister, the late Y. S. Rajashekhar Reddy. Some politicians are also in the dock, but the officers became more culpable because they had done the paperwork.
Look also at what happened when Parakh’s name figured in the coal block FIR. The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement which detailed the movement of the file related to the allotment of coal blocks to Hindalco. The statement said that the Prime Minister merely signed something Parakh had proposed. Worse, information and broadcasting minister Manish Tewari and external affairs minister Salman Khurshid said ministers could not be going through every word and notation on a file before signing it.
This has a clear message for the bureaucracy – when push comes to shove, politicians will stand by their own and disown official. This is not just an end to the days of anonymity of the bureaucracy – the unwritten code that existed in the fifties and sixties that ministers would take responsibility for decisions they had signed off on. It is an indication that politicians now expect bureaucrats to take the rap for everything, much like drivers have to own up to hit-and-run accidents committed by their rich employers.
Who is to blame for this state of affairs? Unpalatable as it may be, the truth is that the bureaucracy has brought upon itself a lot of the problems it is facing today. Indira Gandhi has rightly been blamed for politicising the bureaucracy, but could it have happened to the extent it has unless bureaucrats also played ball?
The onus of change, therefore, cannot be on politicians alone. Why would they initiate change in a system that works for them all the time? It is the bureaucrats who must now put the political establishment on notice – that they will no longer be willing accomplices or supine doormats.
But this will mean doing a lot of things differently.
It will mean not taking verbal orders, especially if they are illegal. There is a convention that verbal orders are recorded in a note without delay. The fact that the Supreme Court had to recently give an order insisting on this practice shows how rarely it was being followed.
It will mean using the various protections that service rules offer to resist pressure and do one’s job with integrity.
But above all, it will mean bureaucrats presenting a united front to the political establishment.  Many bureaucrats succumb to pressure because they cannot fight the system alone. They need to have the confidence that their colleagues and seniors will stand by them. This solidarity cannot be episodic but has to be sustained.
Harassment in the form of frequent or clearly vindictive transfers can be checked by the cabinet secretary at the Centre or the chief secretaries in the states. But often they do not pull their weight adequately. If the head of a service refuses to stand up for those under his charge, who will?
Political bosses find ways to get around stubbornly upright officers by using other pliable officers. A senior officer can use his position to browbeat a junior. And a willing-to-be-compromised junior can put the senior in a spot by drafting a note or manipulating a file in a particular manner. Ashok Khemka, the controversial Haryana cadre IAS officer, has accused two other officers of conspiring with the state government to harass him because he tried to block some allegedly dubious land deals of Robert Vadra. One of the two officials, he has alleged, had a role in approving these land deals. Clearly, for every upright officer, there are several others who not only facilitate wrongdoing but also the harassment of conscientious and principled colleagues.
The Adarsh case should be a wake up call for all those bureaucrats who either willingly collude with the political establishment for rewards ranging from comfortable/lucrative postings to material gain or silently acquiesce in wrongdoing.  At the first sign of trouble, the politicians will abandon them and leave them holding the can. And then their colleagues are not likely to rally around them.
There are two lessons for the bureaucracy. One, don’t get into too a cosy relationship with the political bosses; stay within the boundaries set by the Constitution.  Two, stand by your own, especially when upright colleagues are being harassed or facing pressure.  But the second will not be possible without the first. No Supreme Court order or administrative reform measures will work if bureaucrats willingly break ranks to flirt with their political bosses.

AAP’s volunteers shouldn’t be Youth Congress redux

http://www.firstpost.com/politics/volunteers-or-vigilantes-the-perils-of-aaps-anarchic-politics-1328297.html

`This is like a return to the Emergency days.’ That startling comment came from my mother yesterday as she was reading the newspapers. She was referring to this report in the Indian Express Newsline which said that the Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain has dismissed the existing hospital management societies, Rogi Kalyan Samitis, and that Aam Aadmi Party volunteers, with their trademark caps, were conducting inspections and helping out with administration in government hospitals, apparently without formal orders.
The RKSs were headed by the local MLA and comprised representatives of hospital administrations, doctors, civil society members and patients. They were part of the National Rural Health Mission eco-system and were the interface between hospitals and the public. Jain said the samitis were defunct and that he had received a lot of complaints of corruption and malfunctioning.    
Three days earlier, Delhi’s education minister Manish Sisodia had announced that volunteers would be recruited to monitor government schools. They will visit government schools and monitor toilets, water supply, cleanliness and presence of teachers and report their findings to the education minister every day.
So what’s all this to do with the Emergency? Apparently during those dark days, similar volunteers from the Youth Congress would go around `checking’ various things – from the working of government babus to the number of guests and the quantity and kinds of food being served at weddings (those were the days of guest control order). Needless to say, bullying and muscle flexing was common and the `volunteers’ would often be `pacified’ in various ways. 
Going by the Indian Express report, the muscle flexing may have already started. Hospital administrators and doctors are complaining about the AAP volunteers barging into labour rooms and calling doctors out of surgeries to complain and threatening filing of Right to Information (RTI) applications.
One needs to allow for a measure of hyperbole in these reports. Let’s face it, public hospitals are not the best run places and any attempt at reform will affect those who are benefiting from the current mess. The Indian Express journalist does not appear to have personally witnessed any bullying but is going by the accounts of doctors and managers. It would be natural for them to exaggerate things in the hope of derailing what could be a welcome initiative by discrediting it.
It’s also a bit unfair to liken the AAP volunteers to members of the Youth Congress which, at least in Delhi, was viewed with a fair bit of alarm. In contrast, AAP has come to power on the wings of a lot of goodwill from the public and its activists are fired by a sense of idealism about changing the way politics is conducted – the kind of politics the Youth Congress represented.
And yet, there is need to set off the alarm bells.
The current system of governance in Delhi needs to be overhauled completely but little is to be achieved by dismantling existing structures in a hurry. Jain, according to the Indian Express report, plans to replace the RKSs with new Jan Swasthya Samitis, which will be devoid of political interference. But shouldn’t that have been done before the RKSs were wound up? Why create an anarchic situation with volunteers having a free run of hospitals? Anarchy is romantic and even acceptable as long as an organization is in an activist mode. Once it comes into a position of responsibility, it has to function according to a set of rules and procedures. If these procedures are blocking reforms, then change them by all means but creating a vacuum is not the answer.
Delhi needs an active and vigilant citizenry; but this should not become an aggressive vigilante mode, which is susceptible to misuse. The initial lot of AAP volunteers may be an idealistic bunch which would not misuse powers, but can AAP stand guarantee for each and every volunteer, especially those flocking to it in droves after it formed the government?
Even if there is no misuse, reckless vigilantism is also dangerous. People who believe they are morally superior – as many AAP volunteers do – invariably adopt to a `my way or the highway’ route. This was precisely the attitude of Anna Hazare, from whose Jan Lokpal movement AAP was born. There is a certain impatience with and disdain for any criticism or urging of caution.
So it wouldn’t be surprising for overzealous volunteers to refuse to accept perfectly valid reasons for some official not being able to do things the way they want it to be done. Not all of them will be able to distinguish between genuine problems in doing things their way and clear attempts to block reform. The Delhi law minister forcing the law secretary to call a meeting with judges (something only the High Court can do) and accusing him of siding with the old regime is a case in point. When this is the case with the law minister, can ordinary volunteers be capable of more discretion?
A Firstpost article had wondered if the AAP revolution was similar to the French or the American revolution? But remember what happened during the French revolution, when vigilantism gave way to mob rule?
Governance in Delhi needs to be shaken up, no doubt. Only AAP has this as an agenda. But in implementing this agenda, the party needs to take care that its cadres don’t become like the vigilantes of the French revolution. Or like the Youth Congress during the Emergency.

Modi's poochandi effect on Congress

http://www.firstpost.com/economy/quick-modi-is-coming-fear-spooks-cong-into-reform-action-1311349.html

Harassed Tamilian parents troubled by their naughty children invariably use two words to get them to behave. Poochandi varan (poochandi is coming) or poochandi koopuduta (should I call the poochandi).
A poochandi is a fictitious fearful person – I remember being told as a child that a particularly frightening looking vagabond was poochandi  - who would, children were told, take them away. The threat invariably worked – children ate their food, drank their milk, went to sleep or did whatever their elders wanted them to.
Narendra Modi seems to have had a similar poochandi effect on the Congress Party (thought it is rather difficult to think of a 129-year-old political party as a below five-year-old child). Psyched by the very real possibility of a Modi-fronted BJP coming within more than touching distance of power in 2014, the Congress and the government that it leads are suddenly in a policy and implementation overdrive, doing all that they had dithered over all these years.
Gone is the arrogant complacency; there is now a new sense of purpose. So an obstructionist environment minister is shown the door; the norms for approvals are eased; coal supplies to nine power plants have been cleared as have some port projects; and Rahul Gandhi is no longer sounding lost and confused. His focussed speech at Ficci last Saturday and a press conference on the Lokpal Bill the Saturday before that signalled this change. His press conference yesterday following the meeting of Congress chief ministers could be another sign that the party is not taking its eye off the ball. Lost in the noise over the rap that Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan got are the four actions Congress-ruled states have been told to take to tackle price rise and reach essential commodities to the poor.
One of these is time-bound. By January 15, the states have to remove fruits and vegetables from their respective Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Acts. They have also been told to be strict in implementing the Essential Commodities Act (ECA) to deal with hoarders and to invoke the Prevention of Black-marketing and Maintenance of Supplies of Essential Commodities (PBMSEC) Act, 1980 against chronic offenders. And they have to take steps to immediately implement reforms in the public distribution system (PDS) in line with the Food Security Act. Finally, Congress-ruled states have to open fair price shops run by state governments on self-help groups of women to sell essential commodities like fruits, vegetables and eggs at reasonable prices.
Clearly, someone in the Congress has finally got the message that rising prices is not something the Reserve Bank can control through higher interest rates and that supply bottlenecks have to be eased. Delisting fruits and vegetables – the items that have seen the highest levels of inflation – is a good first step in that direction. Of the 12 Congress-ruled states, three – Maharashtra (Vashi), Karnataka (Bengaluru) and Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad) – have the largest fruits and vegetables mandis, according to the Financial Express. This move will enable framers to bring fruits and vegetables directly to the market, which will help in easing prices and bring some relief to household budgets, though some agriculture policy watchers like Devinder Sharma are skeptical of this happening. It remains to be seen if the chief ministers can take on the powerful lobbies that control these mandis merely because Rahul Gandhi has asked them to.  It will be great if they can.
The other steps Gandhi announced may not be so effective.
The Essential Commodities Act (ECA) is dusted out and deployed every time the inflation dragon rears its head, but its effectiveness is somewhat doubtful. Both its critics (who want it scrapped) and supporters (who want it to continue) agree that the ECA has not been able to check price spikes whenever there is a shortage of some food item. On the other hand, it is implemented in a ham-handed manner and often becomes a tool for harassment. 
The logic behind setting up more fair price shops to sell fruits and vegetables is not clear. If these items are delisted from the APMC Act, and if silly rules don’t hamper hawkers and street vendors, the cooling effect on prices will make such steps redundant. Special outlets work only during times of price spikes. In Delhi, for example, government sales outlets were set up to sell onions at cheaper rates. Unless this is a way of doling out shop licences ahead of the elections.
The PDS reforms will take time to pan out. They have more to do with improving the last mile of the PDS chain – transporting food grains from godowns to fair price shops and then to the consumer – to eliminate diversion. This requires the deployment of technology – Aadhar, digitization of ration cards and list of beneficiaries, smart cards, use of GPS and SMS to track movement of food grains, to name just a few. These can’t be done overnight.
Questions naturally arise about the haste that is driving the flurry of decisions and actions. Are decisions and actions being pushed through without enough thought going into them, just like the Lokpal Bill was passed without sufficient discussion? Could these then lead to more problems some months down the line – when the Congress isn’t around to deal with them? These are questions that need to be asked and answered.
There are reports that Veerappa Moily, as environment minister, may give the go ahead to GM crops. The hyper-active and obstructionist green lobby has been red-flagging this and had managed to persuade the previous two ministers, Jairam Ramesh and Jayanthi Natarajan, to block field trials. But in overturning these, are essential precautions – that are in place in countries that have embraced BT foods – being given the go-by? When easing environmental norms for large industrial projects, are necessary safeguards being junked?
Is the fear of the Modi poochandi leading to rash decision-making?
Actually, it was the Congress and those whom economist Arvind Virmani calls the LIMPs (Leftist Intellectuals, Media and Politicians) who first portrayed Modi as poochandi. Except that they used the H-word from Europe of the 1930s. Poochandi varan, they warned the public, pointing to 2002, fake encounters, Haren Pandya’s murder, the snooping controversy and a lot more. Your freedoms will be jeopardised; your lives will be in danger, they all warned. But the public didn’t get spooked.
I remember a young cousin turning the poochandi tables on my grandmother once. Should I call the poochandi, she asked, when my grandmother did not do something she wanted. It was a sign that she wouldn’t be frightened any more.
Voters in four states have, in effect, shown that they are not going to be frightened into not voting for the BJP. They, too, have turned the poochandi tables on the Congress.
Whether the poochandi comes or not is immaterial. What matters is the effectiveness of the threat. It is the Congress that is now being spooked into action. Someone now has to ensure that it is the right action in the right direction.